Digital video transmission has become a regular service offering from many service providers, whether over conventional cable television networks, wireless networks, or packet-switched IP-based networks, such as the Internet. Consumers that view video streamed over a packet-switched IP-based network are somewhat used to the delay associated with the digital video buffering, particular when first initiated. Consumers of conventional television are less used to this delay, since analog television had little or no delay associated with a channel change event. Digital television, on the other hand, can produce delays during a channel change while the set-top box waits receive an I-frame in the broadcast stream and then buffers a suitable number of frames before beginning to play the video on a display screen. The delay can be greater when dealing with non-broadcast services, such as video-on-demand, etc.
Other non-video content can results in the same buffering or delivery delay associated with video. This situation will continue to exist as the growth of network bandwidth fails to keep up with the growth in the size and complexity of content, particular in the case of wireless transmission. Even without buffering issues, delay in content delivery can be a major cause of long channel change time.
Channel switch time is the delay that is measured from when the end user presses a button to change the channel, i.e. when a content request is input, until the new channel is displayed in full screen. The typical delay is 2 or more seconds for linear broadcast programs; for Video on Demand (VoD) or Pay Per View (PPV) the delay varies from a couple of seconds up to 1 minute depending on the system. As more and more high definition (HD) or 3D programs are demanded by consumers, there are greater demands for an effective fast channel change (FCC) solution.
Currently there are some solutions that attempt to reduce the delay that occurs during a channel change event in a video broadcast environment. One solution called instant channel change (ICC) involves placing servers within the broadcast network that maintain a continuously updated circular buffer of the entire recent content stream on all channels. When the switching channel event occurs, the server unicasts a cached stream of content from the requested channel starting with an I-frame to the client device at an accelerated rate. After the system sends enough cache content to ‘catch up’ to live TV, it begins to send new video content at the nominal bit rate of the stream.
The ICC solution is costly due to the need for fast high-capacity servers in the network continuously buffering all content, and it does not scale well.
It would be advantageous to provide for a method and system that, in part, improves the user experience in viewing digital content transmissions.